Modelo examen 7 – Reading

Part 1

Read the following text, then read the five statements. Some of these statements are true according to the text, some of them are false. Write T for True or F for False in the box next to each statement.  

Researchers at the University of Surrey, in Britain, and Linnaeus University, in Sweden, have published a new study highlighting what they call “a darker side of hypermobility”. The “hypermobile”—largely but not exclusively business travellers—have won a certain cachet in contemporary society, with the worldliness they seem to acquire from their travels and the envy-inducing social-media posts they leave in their wake. But, the researchers warn, “Whilst aspects of glamorization in regard to mobility are omnipresent in our lives, there exists an ominous silence with regard to its darker side”.

The study, which synthesizes existing research on the effects of frequent travel, finds three types of consequence: physiological, psychological and emotional, and social. The physiological ones are the most obvious. Jet lag is the affliction travellers know best, although they may not anticipate some of its direr, if rarer, potential effects, like speeding ageing or increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Then there’s the danger of deep-vein thrombosis, exposure to germs and radiation—people who fly more than 85,000 miles a year (say, New York to Seattle and back every three weeks, or New York to Tokyo and back seven times) exceed the regulatory limit for exposure to radiation. And finally, of course, business travellers tend to get less exercise and eat less healthily than people who stay in place. The psychological and emotional toll of business travel is more abstract, but just as real.

Frequent flyers experience “travel disorientation” from changing places and time zones so often. They also suffer mounting stress, given that “time spent travelling will rarely be offset through a reduced workload, and that there may be anxieties associated with work continuing to accumulate (e.g. ‘inbox overload’) whilst away”. Due to the absence from family and friends, “hypermobility is frequently an isolating and lonely experience,” the authors write. The accumulated impact can be substantial. One study of 10,000 World Bank employees found that the business travellers among them were three times as likely to file psychological insurance claims. Finally, there are the social effects. Marriages suffer from the time apart, as does children’s behaviour. What is more, relationships tend to become more unequal, as the partner who stays at home is forced to take on more domestic duties. There’s a gender disparity here, since most business travellers are men.

Friendships also fray, as business travellers often “sacrifice local collective activities and instead priorities their immediate families when returning from trips”. Of course, these impacts are mitigated by the fact that they fall disproportionately on a segment of the population that is already doing rather well. The “mobile elite” tend to have higher incomes and access to better health care than the population at large. According to the study, in Sweden, 3% of the population accounts for a quarter of international travel; in France, 5% covers half of the population’s total distance travelled. So these may be problems of the 1% (or the 3%, or the 5%). But they’re real enough regardless. By all means feel jealous of acquaintances’ Instagram photos of exotic meals and faraway attractions. But harbour a small amount of concern as well.

1) Loneliness is linked with hypermobility as per passage. 

2) Frequent long distance Travelers are more likely to get involved in the cardiovascular disease condition?

3) Society envies the frequent travellers since frequent travellers tend to visit attractive locations and enjoy exotic meals. 

4) Hyper-mobile elite possess a cachet in the society. 

5) There is enough awareness concerning the problems faced by hyper-mobile people. 

Part 2

Read the text and fill the gaps with the correct sentences A-H. Write the letter of the missing sentence in the box in the gap. There are two extra sentences you will not need. 

A) According to deputy benefits manager Rebecca Strang, it was clear within two weeks that the new system was going to work well for all concerned. “It made all our lives easier,” she says. “The staff were happier, team morale went up, and there was more incentive to finish workloads. If the new system was taken away now, there’d be World War III in my office.”

B) She had to be in for 9am, when the phones started ringing, but that meant caring for her elderly mother (and her dog) every morning before braving the rush hour traffic. “I used to get quite stressed sitting on the bus, hardly moving, knowing there was nothing I could do about it,” she says. “I don’t handle that sort of thing too well.” 

C) Although not all ideas were taken up, the pilot has been an unqualified success: sickness levels in the housing benefit section have dropped by half, productivity is up, a backlog of cases has been dealt with – and Wyatt is still there. Merton was recently held up by the government as a model of good practice for public sector employers, and has published a national guide to work-life balance, funded jointly with Unison. 

D) A survey published last month rams this point home. It reveals that half the employees interviewed were unaware of the job options on offer to make their lives easier. Managers also confided that while they sympathised with workers’ needs, it was difficult to agree to requests for flexible working hours or unpaid leave when staff were often already stretched to the limit.

E) “We had recruitment problems, high levels of sickness and high staff turnover,” he says. “And there was a general feeling that staff morale was low. We felt we needed to do something pro-active.”

F) The cynic may think it is all a good management ploy to increase working hours and produce a flexible workforce, but that’s not how the union sees it. “The main thing is that it empowers staff,” says Sean Cunnisse, Unison’s branch secretary at the authority. “Although a manager can still say ‘No’, now they have to justify their decision, rather than staff having to justify why they should be allowed time off.”

G) Wyatt now goes to work early, arriving well before 9am to avoid the morning traffic, and leaves mid-afternoon. “It has made all the difference,” she says. “It really does make you feel you’ve got more control over your life. It gives me a chance to organise my working time around my other needs.” 

H) “Quite frankly, there weren’t many options,” he blurts. Despite his haggard appearance and his quick temper, one could see he clearly care for his employees.

Getting a Life

Six months ago, Carol Wyatt was on the verge of leaving her job as an inquiry officer in the housing benefit department of Merton council, south London. It wasn’t that she didn’t like it; she had even taken a salary cut to take the post in November last year. But the journey to work was taking its toll.

Normal flexi-time did not apply to the job and Wyatt told her line manager she wanted to leave. She was not the only one. As the authority’s assistant chief executive, Keith Davis, readily admits, the council was hardly what they call an employer of choice.

Prompted by the public services union Unison, Merton applied for – and won – 50,000 from the government’s challenge fund to pilot a ‘work-life balance’ scheme in three departments, including housing and council benefits. A programme was devised after a series of focus groups, run by consultancy Briony Group, in which employees were asked to say how they would like to work in an ideal world. Staff raised concerns about rigid working times and inflexible core hours and came up with suggestions for a four-day week and homeworking. 

So what changed? Office hours were extended, so that people can now work any time between 7am and 7pm, and core hours were abolished. Staff can take time off as and when they need it to meet other commitments, as long as they make it up and meet their targets. Now as little as half an hour can be taken, even at short notice. Previously, everyone had to book a half day’s leave in advance.

Other people arrive later in the morning after taking their children to school, or take time out when they have appointments; some people like to work late, when it is quieter; and others work at home some days so that they can be there when the plumber calls, or the new sofa is delivered. 

Davis is adamant that the scheme is not a backhanded way of improving council services and extending working hours. He says: “Of course, there are some basic rules – mainly, that the service comes first. People have to commit to that. But we’re finding that staff are working together to cover each other. They come up with the arrangements themselves. There’s a lot of self-rostering.”

Part 3

Read the four texts below. There are eight questions about the texts. Decide which text (A, B, C or D) tells you the answer to the question. The first one is done for you.

In which text does the writer:

Example: watch the weather as part of his/her job?   A

1) Do a job which can be upsetting at times?

2) Have to make his/her own timetable to work? 

3) Sometimes forgets how enjoyable his/her job is? 

Which text is saying the following?

4) Going through long periods of inactivity while on duty. 

5) He/She was under great pressure not to make mistakes.

6) Personal appearance is a daily duty. 

7) Going back to working days can be a challenge.

Part 4

Read the article and answer the questions. Write a maximum of five words for each answer.

Lives at Stake

Catastrophes at sea and in the air make grim headlines: they represent a great deal of sorrow for the families of the dead and injured. Why do they occur? Terrorists plant bombs, as in the case of the destruction of the American airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland. Pyromaniacs light fires, as in the case of the ferry, Scandinavian Star, sailing from Norway to Denmark. In the week following that tragedy, there were two other cases of fires on board ferries: on one plying between Wales and Ireland, and on another between Portsmouth and Cherbourg. In both of them, a man died.

Clearly, fire is a commonplace hazard, and a very dangerous one, at sea. Talking after the Scandinavian Star had been towed into the small port of Lysekil, a Swedish police spokesman made it clear how awful it had been. He said: «The toll from the blaze that engulfed the ferry south of Oslo fjord is still officially 75 dead and 60 missing but about 100 bodies have already been taken off the ship and as many as 50 to 100 could still be on board. People tried to save themselves in the cabins and they are lying in big piles and it’s difficult to figure out how many there are. There are a lot of children.»

In the immediate aftermath of such catastrophes reports of inadequate safety measures circulate. On board the Scandinavian Star, a fireman said the ferry had only one system to pump and spray water on to the flames and that pumping and spraying had to be done alternately. On a wider scale, newspapers reported once again on the world-wide system of «flagging-out» which means that ships are not registered in the countries where they operate, and where the regulations are strict and expensive, but in places like Panama and Cyprus and the Bahamas, where they are lax and cheap. The Scandinavian Star, although Danish-owned, was registered in the Bahamas.

One of the more outrageous cases came to light in October 1989. A general cargo ship named the Bosun set sail from Hamburg under the flag of the small central American state of Belize. West German police arrested and charged two men, the ship’s British master and its German owner. They were charged with flying a false flag, and forgery of Belize government documents. A police officer said: «Belize was not the latest entrant in the cheap flag stakes; they in fact operate no shipping whatsoever. When we contacted the Belize High Commission in London, they were astonished to learn that a ship was pretending to be registered in their country.»

Rules are laid down for ship safety by United Nations organizations. The rules are strict, and specify that a ship must be built with heat and fire resistant bulkheads, fire doors to passenger and crew areas, sealed cable and air conditioning trunking to block smoke, non-combustible materials and/or sprinkler systems, smoke detectors and alarms, and signposted emergency exits. But all these rules of ship design are meaningless according to an expert from the Nautical Institute. He explains: «The big loophole is the lack of power to test whether these rules are being enforced. The port state is entitled to carry out spot checks on ships to make sure their safety certificates are in order; the lifeboats are all there and don’t have holes in them; and that there are the necessary charts, life-jackets in the racks, and fire hoses in their reels. But they don’t have the power to test whether they all work, or the crews know how to use them. I think the public has a right to be worried.» He goes on to point out that the Scandinavian Star would have been built to a very high design standard. However, it is likely that neither her crew nor her safety equipment could have been checked in the Bahamas before she began carrying passengers.

Why do the ship-owners do it? According to the Secretary of the National Union of Seamen, the answer is cost. He says: «The Danish owners of the ill-fated Scandinavian Star could have registered her in Denmark and employed ratings belonging to the appropriate union. These would have been properly trained in firefighting and lifeboat drills and been able to communicate with their officers and the passengers in the event of an emergency. The ship would have come under the rigorous scrutiny of the Danish port inspectorate.

«But the inspectors might have insisted on potentially costly modifications and the ratings would have asked for Danish wages and accompanying social benefits. Much simpler (not to mention cheaper) to register her in the Bahamas and at a stroke free the owners from such irksome restrictions. Among the survivors of this horrific tragedy there may be some ideologues who share this free-market philosophy, but I doubt it.»

1) Please give an example of catastrophes at sea.

2) Why do fires sometimes occur on board ships?

3) What method is not fully respected all over the world? 

4) How was the Belize High commission when figuring out that a ship was not registered in the country?

5) Why are the strict rules of shipbuilding ineffective?

6) What negligence has happened with the Scandinavian Star boat before carrying passengers?

7) What is the reason behind the malpractice with the ship-owners?

8) What would have been much affordable for the Danish ship owner according to the inspector?